King Sombra
King Sombra, or simply Sombra, is a male initially-umbrumunicorn, the former tyrannical ruler of the Crystal Empire, and the main antagonist of the season three premiere, the season nine premiere, and the IDW comics' thirteenth story arc. Princess Celestia tells Twilight Sparkle that he took over the Crystal Empire a thousand years ago but was banished into the frozen north. Before his banishment, King Sombra put a curse on the Crystal Empire which made it vanish into thin air. When the Empire returns, so does Sombra, who attempts to retake it. He is defeated by Princess Cadance and the Crystal Ponies' use of the Crystal Heart. In The Beginning of the End - Part 1, Sombra is restored by Grogar to join him in an alliance with other villains so they can conquer Equestria together and defeat Twilight and her friends once and for all. However, Sombra tries to take over Equestria by himself and, despite being able to destroy the Tree of Harmony and the Elements of Harmony and conquer both Ponyville and Canterlot, he is defeated again by the Mane Six. Depiction in the series King Sombra first appears in the season three premiere The Crystal Empire - Part 1. Princess Celestia describes him at the beginning of the episode as "a unicorn whose heart was black as night" and took over the Crystal Empire. In a flashback, Sombra looks down gleefully from his castle at a chain-gang of Crystal Ponies, when two silhouettes of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna shoot a beam at him that turns him to "shadow" and banishes him to "the ice of the arctic north." Celestia says he was able to put a curse on the empire as he was imprisoned, which caused it to "vanish into thin air". Celestia demonstrates that if the empire is filled with hope and love, then those emotions will be reflected across all of Equestria, but if hatred and fear take over the Crystal Empire, black crystals sprout from the ground. When Celestia creates the crystals, her horn is engulfed in black mist and her eyes glow green and emanate the purple smoky trail the same way Sombra's eyes do, implying that she may have knowledge of his magic. Twilight Sparkle and her friends travel to the Crystal Empire to defend it under the order of Princess Celestia. When they arrive in the frozen north of Equestria, they meet with Shining Armor on the outskirts of the Crystal Empire. Sombra rises as a cloud of black smoke behind them and pursues them through the snow. Shining Armor confronts Sombra and shoots a beam at him, which Sombra evades and lets the beam pass through the black cloud. Sombra then charges at Shining Armor, and the scene cuts right before they clash. Twilight and her friends pass safely through the barrier and arrive in the Crystal Empire, soon followed by Shining Armor, whose horn is now encrusted with black crystals which prevent him from using magic. When they meet Princess Cadance, Shining Armor explains that Cadance is using her magic to "spread love and light" to protect the Crystal Empire and that King Sombra countered Shining Armor's protection spell. Later in the episode, Twilight and her friends interview some Crystal Ponies. One pony whom Twilight interviews tells her that she can't seem to remember anything before King Sombra came to power and flinches while a superimposed image of King Sombra's eyes flashes over her. She then says she doesn't want to remember anything about his rule. When Cadance's magical barrier starts to fade, Sombra approaches the barrier, but his horn is sheared off as the barrier rises again. It falls to the ground and transforms into a black crystal which embeds itself in the ground and begins spreading to the crystal gates of the Empire. Twilight performs "a little trick Celestia taught her", which gives her the same green glowing eyes and horn engulfed in black mist as Celestia did at the beginning of the story. She turns the throne black with this spell, and slowly makes the throne room look the way it did when King Sombra ruled. She finds a hidden staircase, and at its bottom is "a doorway that leads to your worst fear", created by "King Sombra's dark magic". When Twilight is under the spell, she has the same green eyes as Sombra; Spike wakes her from this state, but then he falls into it himself and his eyes change the same way, and Twilight wakes him in turn. Eventually, Twilight and Spike find the Crystal Heart, but Sombra, able to invade once Cadance is no longer able to perform her spell, traps Twilight in a ring of black crystals to prevent her from using the heart. Twilight tells Spike to take the Crystal Heart to Cadance. At first Sombra advances as a pillar of black smoke, and he materializes as his unicorn self at the end of it. Right as he's about to take the Crystal Heart from Spike while standing upon a growing, menacing shard of his own crystals, Cadance, propelled by Shining Armor, snatches Spike and the Crystal Heart before he can reach them. With the return of the Crystal Heart and Cadance saying "Use the light and love within you to ensure that King Sombra does not return", the Crystal Empire is restored to its former glory and Sombra, much to his horror, shatters to pieces in a flash of light, along with his crystals, and his remaining smoke dissipates. In Games Ponies Play, Sombra is briefly referenced when Rainbow Dash says the Crystal Ponies "lost a thousand years to an evil king's curse." In The Cutie Re-Mark - Part 1, due to Starlight Glimmer altering history, she inadvertently creates an alternate future where Sombra—unopposed by the Mane Six and Spike—has successfully reclaimed the Crystal Empire and conquered half of Equestria. He is seen commanding an army of Crystal Ponies under his control in a war against Princess Celestia. In the season six premiere, Spike mentions King Sombra while telling the Crystal Ponies about how he was defeated. Later, Twilight Sparkle mentions that the reason King Sombra merely hid the Crystal Heart rather than getting rid of it was to stop the Frozen North's weather from breaching the empire. King Sombra is also mentioned in Shadow Play - Part 2. Season nine In the season nine premiere The Beginning of the End - Part 1, King Sombra is restored by Grogar to join him in an alliance with Queen Chrysalis, Lord Tirek, and Cozy Glow to take over Equestria. Uninterested in allying with his fellow villains, Sombra sets out on his own to retake the Crystal Empire by himself. He is successful in single-handedly storming the city, enslaving its citizens, and imprisoning the royal family, but the Mane Six defeat him with the Elements of Harmony just as quickly, seemingly vaporizing Sombra. As the Mane Six return the Elements to the Tree of Harmony, however, Sombra reappears and destroys the tree along with the Elements, having faked his earlier defeat to remove the source of the Mane Six's power. In Part 2, Sombra proceeds to attack Ponyville, brainwashing its citizens into helping him lay siege to Canterlot Castle, which he easily seizes control of upon finding it unattended by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. However, he is opposed yet again by the Mane Six alongside Discord, who pretends to be injured by Sombra's magic to spur his friends into action. Realizing that they still embody the spirit of the Elements without wielding the artifacts, the Mane Six combine their magic and destroy Sombra a second time. Observing this from his crystal ball, Grogar shows Sombra's demise to the other villains as a warning of what could happen to them if they do not unite against the Mane Six. King Sombra is mentioned in Uprooted, Sparkle's Seven, She's All Yak, and The Last Crusade. Magic Twilight Sparkle says that King Sombra uses dark magic. Black crystals shoot out of the ground as he advances towards the Crystal Empire, and he turns into a shadow in various scenes, dodging attacks and traveling large distances. His horn dissolves when it touches Princess Cadance's protective shield around the empire, and he is eventually repelled by her Crystal Heart magic. In The Beginning of the End, Sombra demonstrates the ability to subjugate ponies into doing his bidding with his gaze, as well as show ponies their greatest fear. Weaknesses As a villain affiliated with hatred, fear, and despair, his greatest weakness appears to be the power of love, joy, and other such positive emotions. He is thus unable to penetrate Princess Cadance's magical love barrier without getting harmed by it, and is destroyed by the Crystal Heart, an artifact powered by positive emotions. Personality King Sombra is described by Princess Celestia as a unicorn whose heart is "black as night". In terms of personality, King Sombra is sadistic, fierce, and cruel, as evidenced by his referring to the Crystal Ponies as his "crystal slaves" and appearing to take delight in seeing them suffer. Though rarely speaking, he appears desperate to retake the Crystal Empire, as he chases Shining Armor and the Mane Six during their first encounter and curses Shining Armor, causing black crystals to grow on his horn and nullify his magic, and when rushing toward Spike in an attempt to regain the Crystal Heart. Sombra is much more talkative in The Beginning of the End - Part 1 and Part 2, in which he is pompous, self-centered, and arrogant, believing with full confidence that he alone is capable of conquering Equestria on his own and rejecting any notion of allying with others. As such, he is dangerously overconfident, believing that the Mane Six can't be a threat to him without the Elements of Harmony (which drives him to pass up a perfect opportunity to brainwash them), that Celestia and Luna would rather flee than face him, and that he can even defeat Discord himself. When the Mane Six use the magic of friendship to overpower him, his arrogance shatters, causing him to break down and desperately deny his impending defeat. Similarities and possible inspirations * Sombra is similar to Sauron from Lord of the Rings. Both have a similar appearance, neither has a lot of screentime or dialogue, both lost their physical form in the past (though Sombra is able to regain his form), and both are pure evil. ** Sombra's theme sounds similar to that of Sauron and Mordor in Lord of the Rings. ** The Crystal Empire under Sombra's control also looks similar to Mordor. ** The way he dies looks similar to Sauron's first defeat, and the way the dark crystal that he is standing on shatters looks similar to Barad-dûr's destruction during Sauron's actual death scene. ** His horn looks similar to Sauron's spikes in Legendary Frog's parody One Ring to Rule Them All. Both it and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic were made with flash animation. ** Meghan McCarthy confirmed in an interview that Sombra was inspired by Sauron, and was only meant to be a dark presence that brings fear to the crystal ponies. ** Interestingly enough, Sauron in Desolation of Smaug, which came out after The Crystal Empire, has more similarities to Sombra: His shadowy form is similar, Gandalf uses a similar light barrier to Cadance to fight him off (which he is only temporarily able to maintain), and there is a similar shaft and staircase in their base. * Sombra resembles many other shadowy villains as well. His first defeat leaving him as a disembodied shadow also gives him a similarity to Myotismon, who also uses fear while in his Omega form. His shadow form also looks similar to that of Makuta. When he appears before the crystal ponies after the barrier disappears, he looks slightly similar to Shendu's ghost on Jackie Chan Adventures. He also looks similar to Aku, and his curse, which essentially sends the Crystal Empire further in time, has been compared to what Aku does to Samurai Jack. * Elements of darkness and shadow have occured in several other previous MLP villains - most notably Nightmare Moon and Tirek. Interestingly enough, both Tirek and Sombra (though the former comes from a different generation of My Little Pony) have tried to kill Spike and are the darkest antagonists in their respective generations. Both are also ultimately destroyed. It also shares the untimely death of another G1 antagonist named Lavan, though that specific villain had a motif of fire and hatrid rather than darkness. * Sombra also shares some similarities to the Shadow Queen from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Both are one of the darkest antagonists in their respective series, are reduced to an invincible shadowy spirit form and then imprisoned, but not before casting an evil curse, and return a thousand years later before they are destroyed the second time around. The Crystal Heart, which was used to defeat Sombra, could act as a counterpart to the Crystal Stars, which negated the Shadow Queen's invincibility. Interestingly enough, the Pure Hearts in Super Paper Mario play a similar role during the final battle. * He shares some similarities to Mephiles the Dark: Both are one of the darkest villains of their respective series, have a shadow form, were sealed away many years ago, are killed by a princess, and appeared in the part of their series that was disliked by many (Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Season 3). * King Sombra's death scene is nearly identical to that of Agent Smith from The Matrix and Hektore from Spyro. Hektore also bears similarity by his low amount of lines. Himiko's death in the 2013 video game Tomb Raider, which came after, is also extremely similar, as is the death of Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy. It also looks similar to Vaati's supposed death in'' Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap'' (though Vaati either survived or was revived). * King Sombra has also been compared to Ganondorf. Trivia * Sombra has a few distinctions as being the first major antagonist in the fourth generation who is. ** A male character associated with darkness (Discord is more associated with chaos and based off Q.) ** A pony who isn't an alicorn (Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Trixie, and the Flim Flam brothers were minor antagonists.) ** Inspired by a Lord of the Rings villain (The Diamond Dogs were minor antagonists.) ** The first character in My little Pony: Friendship is Magic to die. (not counting the Windigoes, and although there are theories about Nightmare Moon (as a separate entity) and Queen Chrysalis, Sombra is the first who is actually confirmed). * Sombra appears to be a blank flank, as he has no visible cutie mark during the scene when he is turned to shadow. * Prior to the episode "Magic Duel", many fans believed Trixie's Alicorn Amulet to have a connection to him. One common theory is that Sombra was corrupted by it and was so far gone that he gained its power and malevolence permanently, another states he was the creator of it. The Amulet also shares the King's color scheme. * "Sombra" is a Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician word for "shadow", which comes from the Latin umbra. * A differently-shaded version of the armor around King Sombra's neck is used for the 2012 Design a My Little Pony Finalists poster, as part of Steel Masquerade's armor. * When he is destroyed, his horn is shown flying past the screen, giving some the impression that he survived and will regenerate from his horn. However, at Unicon 2013 Meghan McCarthy confirmed that Sombra is dead. * He has similar evil traits with Darth Sidious. * He shares traits with the G1 antagonist Tirek, as both are creatures who work in shadow, have a looming, threatening presence, and end up destroyed. His death also almost mirrors that of Lavan, another G1 villain. * Since he has no known motivation for acts of unspeakable cruelty, he is, along with Tirek, the darkest and most evil villain in Friendship is Magic. * Sombra is one of two major villains to not be defeated by Twilight Sparkle (and, in all cases except the Plunderseeds, the other Mane 5, pony or human) by means of a rainbow, other being his predecessor, Queen Chrysalis. Both are defeated by Princess Cadance. * It is possible that King Sombra killed Princess Amore, the Crystal Empire's previous ruler, when he took it over, since she is never seen in the Crystal Empire, which Princess Cadance and Shining Armor take over after Sombra's death. * King Sombra become Thomas' enemy in Thomas' Adventures of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic - The Crystal Empire ''and returns and become The Wild Kratts (Chris and Martin Kratt, Aviva Corcovado, Koki and Jimmy Z), Iago, Berkeley Beetle, Ace, The Lion Guard and Princess Elena's enemy in [[Thomas' Adventures of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - The Beginning of the End|''Thomas' Adventures of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - The Beginning of the End]]. 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